Welcome to Rio; The Complainers – TV review

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/may/28/welcome-to-rio-complainers-tv-review

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You know Cleo Rocos – the actress who used to be Kenny Everett's sidekick and muse, and who once went on Celebrity Big Brother? Well, guess where she lives. Somewhere nice in west London, you think? Hmm, close. No, actually she lives in a dangerous hillside slum with open sewers and a reputation for gun crime. In Rio de Janeiro.

How do I know? Well, she keeps saying so during her strange semi-comedy commentary in this documentary Welcome to Rio (BBC2). "What WE lack in law and order WE make up for with close-knit communities and a lot of freedom"; "WE've already survived our fair share of upheaval and uncertainty"; "WE'll face the future with the same optimism and determination we've always had since we first built our shacks on the hill …"

Oh I see, you actually helped build the Cantagalo favela too, did you Cleo? Either that or she's speaking as some kind of collective voice of the people who live there. She was born in R de J after all, to English and Greek parents; maybe it gives her the right. My mum was born in Lima, and she very much speaks as the voice of Peru's underprivileged shanty town dwellers, even though her old man was the British ambassador …

Anyway, l think it's a bit weird. Otherwise Welcome to Rio is a welcome different view of the city that will soon be very much in the world's spotlight. So no peachy arses on the beach then, or the big Jesus on the hill, but a man named Rocky whose job is to carry white goods up the Cantagalo hill. Not "white goods" as in cocaine (though a bit of that might help poor Rocky get up the 400 steps) but actual domestic appliances. Rocky's a fridge mule.

Then there's Acme, who's kind of Rio de Janeiro's Banksy, though he doesn't appear to have had the big breakthrough into A-list art galleries yet. And Commander Gripp, who leads teams of elite military police into the favelas to flush out the drug barons, ahead of this summer's World Cup spotlight. The process is called pacification, but "don't be fooled by the name" purrs Cleo "Straight Outta Cantagalo" Rocos, as an army of heavily armed robocops storms her hood. "There's nothing peaceful about pacification."

They are quite scary, Rio de Janeiro's police. I once fell out of with them in a very minor way, spent a night in the cells. It wasn't actually that bad – if you haven't sorted your World Cup accommodation yet, you could do worse. Free too ...

Commander Gripp is tragically killed during one of his operations. That doesn't happen often in a documentary, that one of the principal characters doesn't make it to the end. Pacification clearly isn't complete yet. And Cleo has to ease off on the irony for a bit.

One more minor moan: the music. Not so much a moan, as minor perplexity (and for once I'm not on about musical intrusiveness, I'm questioning appropriateness). Brazil is stuffed full of brillant music. So what's the score? Gilberto Gil, forró, Villa-Lobos maybe? Nope. Mozart, Handel and – for a Vasco game – Wagner! Well I guess if the favela's going to get an English/Greek voice, the match may as well get a German one. Could be useful if it comes to penalties.

There's proper moaning in The Complainers (Channel4), an amusing series about customer services and consumers fighting back. Leading the war on the capital's roads is a cyclist named Lewis, aka Traffic Droid. With his flashing lights and helmet cams (he has seven GoPros on the go) and all his special equipment, Lewis makes those elite Brazilian military police look unprepared.

Lewis rides around, yelling at buses, issuing red cards, whipping out his special measuring stick to ensure there is at least one metre between him and the taxi at the lights. Now, I cycle in London, and get cross when people nearly kill me. I've even been known to shout or slap the roof of a car, but not all the time, every day. Lewis, love, do you think you might be going a little over the top? Relax, you might even find you enjoy the ride to work.

I find him on Twitter – #TrafficDroid @SonOfTheWinds – because I want to ask him how he feels about cyclists who jump red lights. He gets straight back to me – he doesn't approve (to be honest I knew this because here he is in the documentary, castigating a fellow two-wheeler for doing just that). I send him a picture, a still from the programme, of a cyclist clearly going through a red, does Lewis recognise him? He doesn't. Lewis – Traffic Droid – it's you. Red card.

I'm @samwollaston if you'd like to follow me.